An Officer and a Spy

give his evidence on Saturday – the first day that the press and public will be allowed back into the courtroom since the opening session. His appearance is only slightly less eagerly awaited than that of Dreyfus himself. He arrives in court wearing the full undress uniform of a general – red tunic, black trousers, with a kepi of crimson and gold. On his breast glints the medal of a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. When he is called, he rises from his place among the military witnesses and walks to the front of the court carrying a black leather document case. He stands no more than two paces from where Dreyfus is sitting, but doesn’t once glance in his direction.
    ‘My deposition,’ he says, in his quiet, hoarse voice, ‘will have to be a trifle long.’
    Jouaust says unctuously, ‘Usher, fetch a chair for the general.’
    Mercier speaks for three hours, producing document after document from his black leather case – among them the ‘lowlife D’ letter, which he continues to insist refers to Dreyfus, and even the fabricated Guénée reports about a spy in the intelligence department, although he leaves out the name of the source, Val Carlos. He passes them up to Jouaust, who hands them along the line of judges. After a while, Labori leans back in his chair and cranes his head to look at me, as if to say, ‘What is this idiot doing?’ I am careful to maintain a neutral expression, but I think he is right: by introducing the evidence of the secret dossier into open court, Mercier is exposing a dangerous flank for Labori to attack in cross-examination.
    On and on drones Mercier, like some paranoid, illiterate editorial in La Libre Parole seeing Jewish conspiracies everywhere. He alleges that thirty-five million francs have been raised to free Dreyfus in England and Germany. He quotes as if it is fact what Dreyfus is supposed to have said about the occupation of Alsace-Lorraine, and has always denied: ‘For us Jews it is not the same thing; where we are, our God is.’ He drags up the old myth of the ‘confession’ before the degradation. He spins the most fantastical explanation as to why he showed the secret dossier to the judges at the court martial, claiming that because of the Dreyfus controversy the country was ‘within two finger-breadths of war’ with Germany – so much so that he had ordered General Boisdeffre to be ready to dispatch the telegrams that would trigger a full mobilisation while he, Mercier, sat with President Casimir-Perier in the Élysée Palace until half past midnight waiting to see if the German emperor would back down.
    Casimir-Perier, who is sitting with the witnesses, actually rises to challenge this lie, and when Jouaust won’t permit him to intervene, he shakes his head at such nonsense, which causes a sensation in the court.
    Mercier takes no notice. It is the old paranoia about Germany, the lingering stench of defeatism after 1870. He presses on. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘at that moment, should we have desired war? Should I, as Minister of War, have desired for my country a war undertaken in these conditions? I did not hesitate to say “no”. On the other hand, was I to leave the court martial in ignorance of the charges against Dreyfus? These documents’ – he pats the case on the stand in front of him – ‘then formed what was called the secret dossier, and I regarded it as imperative that the judges should see them. Could I not have relied on the comparative secrecy of a trial behind closed doors? No, I have no confidence in closed doors! Sooner or later the press manages to get hold of all it wants and publishes it, despite the threats of the government. In these circumstances, I placed the secret documents in a sealed envelope and sent them to the president of the court martial.’
    Dreyfus is sitting straight up in his chair now, looking at Mercier with intense astonishment, and something else, something beyond amazement – for the first time: burning anger.
    Mercier does not see it because he is carefully not looking at him. ‘Let me add one last word,’ he says. ‘I have not reached my age without having had the sad experience of learning that all that is human is liable to error. But if I am weak-minded, as Monsieur Zola has alleged, I am at least an honest man and the son of an honest man. And if the slightest doubt had ever crossed my mind, I should be the first to declare it’ – and now finally he turns in his chair to look at Dreyfus